C A T A L O G U E

OUR PUBLICATIONS

TRANSIT FOR BEGINNERSAuthor: Rheea MukherjeeFormat: Paperback (Ebook not available yet)Imprint: KitaabPublished: 2016Subject: Fiction (Short Stories)Price: SGD$20 / Rs.295 (free shipping within India/Singapore)ISBN: 9789810982133

The blurring of truth and the ready acceptance of lies as two strangers meet in Changi International Airport. A teenager living with her disabled mother discovers her own sexuality and ambition in the unlikeliest way. A girl tells us of her first love, and why it will never see a future. The neglected housewife of an artist dishes out more than just delicious food to feel loved. A man battles against his own moral code and his hunger for life. Just a few of the stories that reexamine lives in South East Asia and allow bizarre urban hallucinations to float into the most mundane moments.

‘Rheea Mukherjee takes her own characters by surprise. The choices they make lead to the most extreme of outcomes, forcing them to scrutinize their own lives ruthlessly. Desires surface, flaws become starker, and human instincts are aroused from dormancy. The reader is left breathless, and strangely satisfied at the lack of easy closure and convenient solutions.’ – Arunava Sinha

‘A stunning collection…evocative, nuanced, and assured’ – Prajwal Parajuly

ABOUT THE AUTHORRheea Mukherjee received her MFA in creative writing from California College of the Arts in San Francisco. Her work has been published in Scroll.in, Southern Humanities Review, Cleaver Magazine, CHA: An Asian Literary Magazine, QLRS, The Bombay Literary Magazine, A Gathering of Tribes, Everyday Fiction, Bengal Lights, and Out Of Print Magazine. Her collection of short stories, Transit for Beginners is her first book published by Kitaab International . She co-founded Bangalore Writers Workshop in 2012 and presently co-runs Write Leela Write, a Design and Content Laboratory in Bangalore.

GANGA JAMUNAAuthor: Sunita Lad BhamrayFormat: Paperback (Ebook not available yet)Imprint: KitaabPublished: 2016Subject: Fiction (Novel)Price: S$18 / Rs.295 (free shipping within India/Singapore)ISBN: 9789810989569

Ganga Jamuna is the tale of Abani, an enchanting woman from Nepal. Blessed with remarkable tenacity, Abani tries to tackle every predicament with a silent resolve. When she is faced with a medical situation that seems insurmountable, Singapore, the hallmark of modern medicine, comes to the rescue, and she finds herself travelling across borders seeking solutions. This journey proves to be a fulfilling experience and a turning point in more ways than one, as she discovers new allies in strangers. Just when everything seems to be finally going right, another bout of misfortune strikes. Holding onto mere filaments of hope, Abani chances upon answers in the elements of nature, which enable her to carry on and make her stronger than before.

ABOUT THE AUTHORSunita Lad Bhamray is an author and educator based in Singapore. After a long rewarding career in teaching, she now enjoys her time devoted to writing. Ganga Jamuna is Sunita’s third book. Her first book, Triumphs on the Turf, was about horse racing in India. It was followed by Grandma Lim’s Persimmons, a storybook for children.

OUR PUBLICATIONS

HALFWAY UP A HILL: STORIES FROM HONG KONGAuthor: T A MortonFormat: Paperback (Ebook not available yet)Imprint: KitaabPublished: 2016Subject: Fiction (Short Stories)Price: S$20 /Rs.295 (free shipping within India/Singapore)ISBN: 9789810984953

In Halfway up a Hill, an array of characters from the eight distinctive short stories converge and interact in and around a busy Soho coffee shop in Hong Kong. In the air-conditioned confines of an unassuming coffee shop halfway up (or down, depending on your point of view) a steep Hong Kong hillside, a multitude of lives entwine, unravel and spin off, together and apart, all watched over and influenced by forces the people involved only vaguely apprehend—as well as observed by the benign spirits that occupy the shop bathroom. The collection of intriguing stories told in Halfway Up A Hill both stimulate and beguile, like a sip of hot coffee on a cold day.

ABOUT THE AUTHORT.A. Morton has worked as journalist and editor for Longman Pearson in Hong Kong. Returning to Europe she now resides in Copenhagen where she works as a freelance editor. She lives with her husband and daughter and is the proud godmother to a commercial ship, Tracey Kosan. Currently she is working towards her masters in Literature, and also on her third novel.

LOSS AND LAWS AND OTHER TAMIL SHORT STORIESAuthor: Jayanthi Sankar & Usha Nagasamy (translator)Format: Paperback (Ebook not available yet)Imprint: KitaabPublished: 2015Subject: Fiction (Short stories)Price: S$15 / Rs.199 (free shipping within India/Singapore)ISBN: 9789810958336

Loss and Laws and other Tamil Short Stories, a collection of Tamil short stories of Jayanthi Sankar and translated by Usha Nagasamy, is based on the observations and experiences of the author’s 26 years of life spent in fast-changing Singapore. The author has been writing for 20 years and has been hailed as a rapidly rising star with a very unique yet universal appeal in the Tamil literary space. There are 17 short stories in this collection–all chosen from the 99 short stories written by the author over a period of 17 years. Each one of the short stories differs so much from the other in theme, mature storytelling as well as format that it can create interest and inquisitiveness in any reader.

ABOUT THE AUTHORBorn and brought up in India, Jayanthi Sankar has been living in Singapore since 1990. She has been creatively active for the past twenty years in short stories, novels, transcreations and essays. Her short story ‘Read Singapore’ was widely recognized in the literary circles. She is writing more in English in the recent years. Having written primarily in Tamil, her short story collections have been short-listed three times for Singapore Literature Prize.

Usha Nagasamy, a Further Education college lecturer, has been doing a lot of interpreting and translating for the local Tamil community over the past decade. In 2009, she began translating the Tamil short stories of her elder sister who is a renowned Tamil writer from Singapore. She lives in Greater London.

OUR PUBLICATIONS

KAFKA IN AYODHYA AND OTHER SHORT STORIESAuthor: Zafar AnjumFormat: Paperback (Ebook not available yet)Imprint: KitaabPublished: 2015Subject: Fiction (Short Stories)Price: S$15 / Rs.295 (free shipping within India/Singapore)ISBN: 9789810972769

“From Kafka and Faulkner to Babri Masjid and Bollywood, the myriad strands of contemporary South Asian life are twisted and turned into memorable stories — ironic or indignant, sad or touching — by Zafar Anjum in Kafka in Ayodhya and Other Stories.” – Tabish Khair

“An impoverished couple is plagued by rats in their hut. A young husband struggles with erectile dysfunction. A writer is trapped in his own book by the character he created. And a young Palestinian girl grieves for her brother killed by the Israeli soldiers. This is a collection of heart wrenching stories and fantasy told in simple bold strokes.” – Suchen Christine Lim

“Zafar Anjum’s Kafka in Ayodhya is the storyteller’s storybook. And what better guide than the famous existentialist to take you by the hand? The sojourner will discover the complex-bizarre in the conversations, the places, the atmosphere, the routine, and above all, the people. These are Kafkaesque characters flung into occasions where an absurdist sensibility seems opportune and knocking. You’ll encounter the archetypes, the questing, and the transformations. ‘Stories are found things,’ says one story, its wisdom line echoing through this splendid suite of story gems. The reader will relish the excavation of each tale’s sublime moments — these moments awaiting an unearthing, ‘like fossils in the ground’.” – Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé

ABOUT THE AUTHORZafar Anjum is a Singapore-based journalist, writer and entrepreneur. For eight years, he was the online editor of Computerworld Singapore, Computerworld Malaysia, CIO Asia and MIS Asia. He is the author of six fiction and non-fiction titles, including the best-selling The Resurgence of Satyam (Random House India, 2012), and Startup Capitals: Discovering the Global Hotspots of Innovation (Random House India, December 2014). He is the director of a publishing startup, Kitaab.org, and co-founder of startupcapitals.com.

ADVENTURE STORIES OF GREAT WRITERSAuthor: Dr. Usha BandeFormat: Paperback (Ebook not available yet)Imprint: KitaabPublished: August 2015Subject: FictionPrice: US$14.95 / Rs.495 (free shipping within India/Singapore)ISBN: 978-981-09-3405-7

The idea of this book germinated when Dr. Usha Bande was reading the biographies of authors like Hemingway, Melville and R. L. Stevenson to teach a course. The thrill of adventures of these writers inspired her to read more such biographies, take out some exciting episodes from their lives and rewrite them for young readers. The result is a collection of real life stories that teach us how to survive and even enjoy life’s harrowing moments. These twenty stories of seventeen young dare-devils portray their uncanny adventures, their will to survive and surmount difficulties but more than that these acquaint us with their writing skills. These young people came back home and penned down what they had experienced – brush with death, an unexpected helping hand, the thrill of being alive. They are litterateurs and their writings have earned them laurels.

ABOUT THE AUTHORDr. Usha Bande is an academic and critic by profession but a creative and journalistic writer by vocation. Usha Bande did her Ph.D. from Himachal Pradesh University, Shimla and post-doctoral research from University of Florida, Gainesville (USA). She is a prolific bilingual writer in English and Hindi. She has translated Marathi stories into Hindi and English. She has more than a dozen books to her credit; some of them are Violence in Media and Society; Culture, Nature and Literature, Ecology and Folk Traditions in Himachal Pradesh, a Coffee Table book entitled Forts and Palaces of Himachal Pradeshand Writing Resistance: A Comparative Study of Women Novelists.

OUR PUBLICATIONS

GOING HOME IN THE RAIN AND OTHER STORIESAuthor: Monideepa SahuFormat: Paperback (Ebook not available yet)Imprint: KitaabPublished: 2016Subject: Fiction (Short Stories)Price: S$15 /Rs.295 (free shipping within India/Singapore)ISBN: 978-981-09-3405-7

‘A classic story teller’ – SHASHI DESHPANDE

“Monideepa Sahu constructs her stories on strong, clear lines, building character, detail and mood, giving in the end, a glimpse of life.”– USHA KR

In this collection of short stories, strangers waiting at a bus stop take off on a magical journey. Going home in the rain can mean taking unlikely detours. A mother and son’s tour through a royal city becomes a journey of rediscovering each other. A lovely young mother crosses into the twilight zone beyond sweetness and light. Food becomes an instrument of torture in ‘Breakfast.’ Everyday situations and people reveal extraordinary facets. These radiant images range from warm and humane to poignant and chilling. They reveal the whimsy and playfulness, the raw edges, the heartbreak, and all things in-between that comprise the human condition.

ABOUT THE AUTHORMonideepa Sahu is a former banker, who had a wonderful time writing her fantasy adventure novel for young people, Riddle of the Seventh Stone. She has also authored Rabindranath Tagore: The Renaissance Man. Her short fiction has been widely anthologized in India and abroad. She writes opinion pieces and feature stories on literature, art and culture for Deccan Herald and other reputed publications. She lives in Bangalore, India, with her extended family of people, a vintage PC and countless arthropods. Connect with her at www.monideepa.blogspot.in.

THE GIRL WHO RAN AWAY IN A WASHING MACHINE AND OTHER STORIESAuthor: Anu KumarFormat: Paperback (Ebook not available yet)Imprint: KitaabPublished: August 2015Subject: FictionPrice: US$14.95 / Rs.495 (free shipping within India/Singapore)ISBN: 978-981-09-3407-1

Anu Kumar‘s stories cover a wide terrain, in time and place. Some are set in India and others in anonymous and mysterious worlds set in the past and the future. Some stories have much of the old and changing India in them, where a woman runs away in a washing machine, and a wife finds strange succour in a godman and his promises. In ‘Preparing for the Riots’ a young boy notices how his childish rivalries with a neighbouring group of boys have in them seeds of an abiding deeper hatred. ‘The Right Reason’ takes on farmer suicides that are just a matter of numbers for government officials, one of whom features again in the story, ‘Tale of a Corpse’ where a farmer’s protest turns him into an object of devotion. ‘The Curator’ mingles present with the past, where a man encounters another looking for a statue of a fabled dancer. ‘The Time Jonathan Went Away’ and ‘Summer in the City’ are set in cities of the future, where science has all the answers yet strange unexpected events still occur. A lover leaves suddenly and a cat’s moods seem suddenly too prophetic, and people disappear in a strange manner whether they are on a roller-coaster in a theme park or simply taking the elevator to the highest floor In these stories, Anu Kumar has experimented with form, voice and style, hoping to explore the possibilities of the short story. Some of her favourite writers in this genre have been Alice Munro, Mavis Gallant, Haruki Murakami and Nirmal Verma.

ABOUT THE AUTHORAnu Kumar has lived in India and Singapore and presently lives in Maryland in the US. She has written for older readers and also for children. The Girl who Ran Away in a Washing Machine and Other Stories is her second collection of short stories after In Search of a Raja and Other Stories (2002). She is presently in the MFA programme in writing at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, US. Her website is anukumar.org.

OUR PUBLICATIONS

THE GOURD SELLER AND OTHER STORIESAuthor: Abha IyengarFormat: Paperback (Ebook not available yet)Imprint: KitaabPublished: August 2015Subject: FictionPrice: US$14.95 / Rs.295 (free shipping within India/Singapore)ISBN: 978-981-09-3401-9

In this collection of short stories, Abha Iyengar brings us stories that are sometimes whimsical, but often serious and tragic, with undercurrents of sex and violence running through. Her stories explore the fragmented lives of those who are a part of the urban landscape and others who migrate from rural landscapes to join them and add to the fragments. The stories speak of women’s lives and their ideas of what constitutes self. Her tales are said to have the tone of fables, a certain visceral rawness, a rather poetic turn of prose, and mostly, ‘defy any easy genre classification.’

ABOUT THE AUTHORAbha Iyengar is an internationally published author, poet and British Council certified Creative Writing Facilitator. Her work has appeared in several anthologies, magazines and literary journals, both in print and online. She is a Kota Press Poetry Anthology contest winner. Her story, ‘The High Stool’ was nominated for the Story South Million Writers Award. She has won several literary contests. She is a member of The Poetry Society of India and Writing in India. She has contributed to popular anthologies like ‘The Simple Touch of Fate’, ‘Knit Lit Too’, ‘Chicken Soup for the Soul’ and The Indo-Austalian Anthology of Short Fiction. Her work has appeared in literary journals like Gowanus Books, Tattoo Highway,Tryst3, Bewildering Stories, Enlightened Practice, The Asian Writer, Door Knobs and Body Paint, Citizen 32, Arabesques Review among others.

URDU POETRY— AN INTRODUCTIONAuthor: Anees Ayesha and Zafar AnjumFormat: Paperback (Ebook not available yet)Imprint: KitaabPublished: November 2013Subject: Non-fiction/poetryPrice: US$18ISBN: 9789810780555

Urdu, which started as a lingua franca of the masses during the Mughal era in India, is one of the most popular languages of South Asia, and is widely used in Bollywood films. There are between 60 and 70 million native speakers of Urdu in the world today. Sadly, the new generation is losing access to this language due to a variety of reasons. Despite this deprivation, they often display a passion for the poetry of this beautiful language. This book is an attempt to present before them a small slice of Urdu’s best heritage in an easy to comprehend style.

ABOUT THE AUTHORThe book was originally penned by Anees Ayesha, 75 who has taught Urdu language and literature in Hyderabad for over 50 years and is an avid promoter of the learning of Urdu among the new generations. She works closely with the Mehfil-i-Khawateen (A women writer’s collective) and Dabistan-i-Jaleeli (Set up to celebrate the works of Ali Ahmed Jaleeli), two organisations that are deeply involved in promoting the Urdu language and appreciation of its contribution to literature and culture in the sub continent.

Zafar Anjum, the translator of the book, is a writer and journalist and his most recent works include a work of non-fiction, The Resurgence of Satyam (Random House India, 2012), and a collection of short stories, The Singapore Decalogue: Episodes in the Life of a Foreign Talent (Red Wheelbarrow Books, Singapore, 2012).

OUR PUBLICATIONS

NAMELESS LANES: AN ANTHOLOGY OF URDU SHORT STORIES(translated from Urdu into English)

Author: Syed Sarwar HussainFormat: Paperback (Ebook not available yet)Imprint: KitaabPublished: 2016Subject: Fiction (Short Stories)Price: SGD$20 / Rs.295 (free shipping within India/Singapore)ISBN: 978-981-09-8955-2

Nameless Lanes is a collection of stories carefully translated from Urdu. It includes the finest works of some of the best Indian writers of Urdu short stories in the twentieth century. All of them are dead now, but their works live to reflect, each in its own inimitable way, the society in which they were created. The stories alternate between the inner world of the protagonists’ painful nostalgia, excessive psychopathological narcissism, spiritual subterfuge, the crisis of identity, and the outer existential realities of a society, ridden with class hatred, violence, destruction of human dignity, and in a constantly menacing flux of unpredictable circumstances, plunging the characters into the appalling dilemma of existence. Hussain’s translation is more than the rendering of a text from one language to another; it is the introduction into English of a completely different society and an array of human experiences exceedingly strange, a sobering transcreation of the original stories unfolding characters in constant conflict with the microcosmic and macrocosmic realities pervading their existence.

ABOUT THE AUTHORSyed Sarwar Hussain teaches English at the College of Languages and Translation, King Saud University. Born on September 13, 1955, Hussain has been teaching English for the past thirty-five years. He has been married over 30 years and has three grown children. An ardent writer and translator, Hussain has several research papers to his credit, in various on-line and international print journals. He has also published four books that include ‘Ideology and the Poetry of Stephen Spender’ (1988), ‘Despairing Voices’ (2011), ‘Ashes in the Fire’ (2012), and ‘The Eastern Brew’ (2013). Hussain has been working on an anthology of his own short stories, and a collection of his poetry.

TWEET (A NOVELLA)Author: Isa KamariFormat: Paperback (Ebook not available yet)Imprint: KitaabPublished: 2016Subject: Fiction (Novella)Price: SGD$20 / Rs.295 (free shipping within India/Singapore)ISBN: 978-981-11-0726-9

Cultural Medallion winner Isa Kamari’s Tweet is a high-quality work of imaginative fiction that marries traditional storytelling with a modern theme. In his first ever English language work, Kamari shows us a new facet of his storytelling abilities, which is part philosophical and part imaginative. The novel is set in Singapore’s bird park, an international tourist destination and an iconic bird sanctuary. Kamari, through a dialogue between a Singaporean grandfather and his grandchild, ponders over the stress and demands of our modern human existence. Intermixed in the narrative is the famous fable of Simurg, the legendary bird, that some of the birds of the bird park are deliriously desirous of meeting. They embark upon a journey that brings them face-to-face with a reality that they had not imagined even in their dreams.

ABOUT THE AUTHORIsa Kamari is a well-known Singaporean writer who has written nine novels in Malay: Satu Bumi, Kiswah, Tawassul, Menara, Atas Nama Cinta, Memeluk Gerhana, Rawa, Duka Tuan Bertakhta and Selendang Sukma. Seven were translated into English: One Earth (Satu Bumi), Intercession (Tawassul), Nadra (Atas Nama Cinta), Rawa (Rawa), A Song of the Wind (Memeluk Gerhana), 1819 (Duka Tuan Bertakhta) and The Tower (Menara). He has also published two collections of poems, Sumur Usia and Munajat Sukma, a collection of short stories, Sketsa Minda and a collection of theatre scripts, Pintu. Isa was conferred the S.E.A. Write Award (2006), the Cultural Medallion (2007), and the Anugerah Tun Seri Lanang (2009). Tweet is his first novel written in English.

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